TweakUI, maybe?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/191579

There should be a means of accomplishing the same thing with registry edits.

Hmm... Win98SE with 3.5 and 5.25 here.

Tried the old Add New Hardware wizard? You can force add it if nothing else.

bjt wrote:

Hmm... Win98SE with 3.5 and 5.25 here.

Tried the old Add New Hardware wizard? You can force add it if nothing else.

It's not only a situation of 3.5 / 5.25 combo, but there is also the other PC which has two 3.5 drives (yes, one is emulated).

I tried that. First of all, you are not able to choose a floppy drive for manually adding new hardware since it is not in the list of selectable hardware groups. And If you choose to allow it to detect the new hardware by itself, it does not find anything.

It feels like Windows 98 SE deliberately refusing any second floppy, especially thinking that both combinations detected and working correctly under DOS and Windows 95, without any additional effort.

Does it work in Win98 DOS mode?

alexanrs wrote:

Does it work in Win98 DOS mode?

I'm not sure at the moment but I remember somehow the answer is no. I Will check again when I'm back home.

Jorpho wrote:

TweakUI, maybe?
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/191579

There should be a means of accomplishing the same thing with registry edits.

Looks like a plan!.. 😀

I'll try that when I'm back at home.

If you can't access B: from a native DOS prompt, it implies that the BIOS machine configuration doesn't know about the second drive.
It is configured in the BIOS setup right 😀

I thought about that too, but as he states in the 1st post:

Both machines are configured as multiboot with MS-DOS 6.22/Windows 3.11, Windows 95 OSR 2.1, and Windows 98 SE partitions.
As you can see, both machines has two floppy drives, and when you boot any of the machines into MS-DOS or Windows 95, both floppy drives are there and working properly. When you boot into Windows 98, there is only dirve A: and no sign of any drive B:.

Only if he meant Win98 DOS Prompt and not DOS MODE.

I tried the TweakUI idea, does not change anything (drive letter B was not hidden).

Drive B: works when I "restart in MS-DOS mode", or booting in MS DOS by pressing F5. It does not work in MS-DOS prompt while Windows 98 is running.

For sanity-check I pulled out my P5TX-Bpro. W98SE did not see the second floppy until I enabled it in BIOS. Then it simply ran new-hardware on the next boot, and no problems.

EDIT:
I set BIOS back to "none" for the second floppy. I could still access it with Smart Boot Manager, FreeDOS, W95 Startup, and W98 Startup. I could not access it with W95. (Original 95, before 95A.)

how the floppy devices was listed in win98 hardware manager?

pewpewpew wrote:

For sanity-check I pulled out my P5TX-Bpro. W98SE did not see the second floppy until I enabled it in BIOS. Then it simply ran new-hardware on the next boot, and no problems.

EDIT:
I set BIOS back to "none" for the second floppy. I could still access it with Smart Boot Manager, FreeDOS, W95 Startup, and W98 Startup. I could not access it with W95. (Original 95, before 95A.)

Second floppies in both machines are of course enabled and correctly set up in BIOS. Pure MS-DOS 6.22 boot can access them, and if not enabled in BIOS, this will not be possible.

Joey_sw wrote:

how the floppy devices was listed in win98 hardware manager?

There is a 1st level entry called "Floppy Disk Controllers" and under this entry, there is "Standard Floppy Controller". The drives themselves are listed under another 1st level entry called "Disk Drives" as "Generic NEC Floppy Drive", together with other disks in the system (HDDs, USB disks, etc.) if I remember correctly.

Well, one thing that's unusual about both of your computer is you've got an awful lot of drives. Try disconnecting everything but the 98SE hdd and the two fdd.

tayyare wrote:

There is a 1st level entry called "Floppy Disk Controllers" and under this entry, there is "Standard Floppy Controller". The drives themselves are listed under another 1st level entry called "Disk Drives" as "Generic NEC Floppy Drive", together with other disks in the system (HDDs, USB disks, etc.) if I remember correctly.

any screenshot for this? especially the expanded one.

other way that i could think of is to use the "compatibility disk mode" as troubleshooting to see if the windows 98 drivers works properly or not.

Joey_sw wrote:

any screenshot for this? especially the expanded one.

other way that i could think of is to use the "compatibility disk mode" as troubleshooting to see if the windows 98 drivers works properly or not.]

Here is the Windows 98 and Windows 95 screenshots of PIII 1000

and here is the Windows 98 and Windows 95 screenshots of PMMX 233

Hi, I'm having the exact same problem, did you ever manage to fix it?

i'll add in that i'm having the same problem, i wonder if anyone ever solved it.

tl,dr, but:
- of course, check the bios settings
- try switching the two drives from the one port on the cable to the other, does that change anything?